“money can’t buy happiness” no offense but I’m at least 40% happier when I actually have money to take care of myself and do fun things… just sayin…

FUN FACT: psychologists and sociologists have actually studied this and it turns out money DOES in fact buy happiness but only up to a certain salary (I think its a little under $100,000 a year idk exactly), basically like once you make enough money that you don’t worry about not having enough money to live and also can do nice things occasionally, so “money can’t buy happiness” is a saying invented by rich people for rich people and they just say it to poor people cause they don’t want to give up their money

^^^ exactly

happiness is linear with respect to money up until a certain point, the question that is up for debate then is, is it worth a removel of a small amount of aggregate happiness from people at the upper end of the scale to assist every getting closer to the point where linearity breaks down

Also recall that losing money hurts more than gaining money feels good. (Losing $100 subtracts more happiness than winning $100 makes you happy.) So the balance point is going to leave the rich with most of their money.

When your “scientific theory” ends up claiming that millions of unpopular low-status people are disgusting liars and filthy perverts, there’s a pretty damn good chance you’ve been biased in making it. Just saying.

Just because you wrap your words as “scientific theory” doesn’t make it value-neutral. I have a “scientific theory” that Bailey is a massive shitlord and can present quite a bit of evidence for it. It’s a scientific theory, don’t be mean to me just for presenting it. And I’m not actually doing science, I’m just popularizing the obvious and universally accepted theory that “Bailey is an Epic Shitlord”, and thus if my evidence is shoddy and ethics questionable it doesn’t matter anyway.

If you make sweeping generalizations of groups, don’t act surprised when the group reacts as if you had made the claim you sweepingly generalized, about every single individual of that group. Goes double with the above. If A = B and B = C then (A == C) = true, that’s just simple logic.

The obvious solution is to maybe not make sweeping generalizations about groups. Especially if said sweeping generalizations are things people would get really upset about if you said them face-to-face.

Especially if the sweeping generalization you’re making involves the claim that millions of people are lying about something pretty big.

Or if you do, you better have some goddamn bulletproof evidence for the sweeping generalization you’re making and an ironclad explanation of alternative hypotheses and why you’ve discarded them. A good rule of thumb would be to make sweeping generalizations only if you believe your evidence could stand a libel court case (even when there is no actual grounds to actually sue you for libel; just think how comfortable you would be defending your case in court).

Get the fucking hint: don’t make sweeping generalizations about specific groups if the generalization involves “everyone who says otherwise is just lying”, that’s just bad form. The truths you will miss that way are probably far less significant than the errors you will avoid.

This applies in all directions. If you say “all men are scum”, don’t act surprised when a lot of people are justifiably very upset and hurt by it and react accordingly.

As a general rule, maybe approximately don’t say things about groups that you wouldn’t say about individuals. Saying things about groups might be less personally targeting and thus less harmful, but it also inevitably targets people you aren’t thinking of (people who say “all men are scum” are usually thinking all men have the underlying state of psychological security which lets them shrug off such things, when a huge number of people actually don’t, at all) and is more fraught with risks.

Niceness is a two-way street.

“Digusting pervert” is your term, not Bailey’s. Bailey said that a phenomenon *has a basis in sexuality*. If you think anybody who does something for sexual reasons is a disgusting pervert, that’s your problem and not his.

Your idea that he is calling anybody a liar is equally unfounded. One of the most basic ideas of psychology and psychiatry is that people don’t necessarily know their own minds. Sometimes this can become very complicated. For example, some people have pseudoseizures – seizures which are not caused by epilepsy, which occur at moments when they need to get out of a situation quickly, and which are what most people would consider “fake” – but most neurologists believe this is not conscious dissembling but the subconscious mind responding to stress in the best way it knows how.

A lot of science involves attributing behavior to people who might not approve of those attributions. For example, many people claim that homophobes are secretly gay. The evidence for this is currently mixed. I assume some homophobes are angry about this – should they be able to harass, doxx, and try to fire the scientists who think this? Some people use Implicit Association Tests to show that lots of people who don’t think they’re racist are actually racist; these tests have recently been found to be sketchy. Should all the scientists who supported them be killed? Or should we just turn their lives into a living hell? Why even have psychology at this point?

I think Bailey’s theories are likely false, but science is full of false theories. The whole point of science is that we expect there to be dozens of false theories for every correct one, and the correct one will eventually win out. If everybody who proposes a false theory gets harassed, science can’t progress – and I’m sure that your harassers will be *super diligent* in making sure they only firebomb the homes of scientists whose theory is *genuinely false*.

And if you think anybody who attributes a phenomenon to something you don’t like deserves to be hurt and harassed, I think you’ve excluded yourself from the category of people who can discuss things maturely, and that any community that cares about epistemic integrity needs to exclude you for their own safety – not just the safety of their truth-orientation, but for the physical safety of their members. I think this is a super super super basic rule and I am surprised we cannot manage it.

Do you want an actual answer? Or are you just taking an opportunity to make fun of us?

Actual answer….

First of all, the Catholic Church is always going to oppose anything that involves human beings used as objects for pure physical pleasure. And that’s literally all porn is: using strangers to get off. And that leads to a second problem- it devalues sex. If you watch people have sex on the Internet as a hobby, you can’t possibly treat sex as what it is for a Catholic- a reflection of God. Beyond that, it’s highly addictive.Beyond that, it is literally the same as prostitution, except that it’s possibly even more selfish (at least when you buy a prostitute, you put yourself at risk for gratification). Beyond that, it’s an industry that abuses its employees horribly. Doing porn does horrid things to the “actor’s” bodies. And it leads to depression, suicide, drug addiction… Because those people are no longer human- they’ve been cheapened to the point of being breathing sex toys.Beyond that, as a woman in a relationship, it would bother me deeply if my boyfriend was looking at other women naked to get off. The only difference between porn and cheating is that porn is socially acceptable.

If you are saying what I think you are saying, you aren’t contrary at all to the above. Lust and pornography is a disordered form of the good of Love and sex. Actively removing that distortion would bring the God-given romantic and sexual desires back in alignment of where they should be. Good for you, though, man. That’s really great! I would have to agree as I have experienced the same thing.

This is why I say catholics are nuts

Really? This is the reason? I can give you a lot more reasons to think we are nuts than that we think porn is bad for you.

We believe the Jesus is _actually_ present in the bread at Mass. We believe that He rose from the dead and is the Son of God. I could go on but you get the point.

Thinking porn is bad for you is really just a sign that you’re paying attention.

Given that lots of people are going to do research about whether porn is bad for you, that some relatively high percent of scientific studies find false positives, that you can get the MRI results you want even if you use a dead salmon instead of a human brain, I’m not sure this is more evidence than you would expect to find by chance.

I’m not saying it’s bad or that people shouldn’t be discussing this question, just that the state of the research right now isn’t very convincing.

I’m also skeptical that enough philosophical legwork has been done to say that porn is “addictive” in a way different from how playing a really fun computer game is addictive, or what that even means.

Seems like a perfect opportunity to taboo “addictive”. I do not think anyone will argue with me that watching some porn leads to watching more porn, and eventually “needing” it. This actuality seems to bypass any need to define it as “medically” addictive.

I mean, it’s a classic infohazard type situation, and we should put warnings on those. “Beware starting this, it tends to get out of hand quickly.” This is true for reasons that are completely distinct from any conventional sexual morality.

So is anime a classic infohazard?

Seems like a relevant question is, “Did a lot of people who started X later regret having started X but not see how to stop X?” I don’t know anybody who got really into anime and then started viewing it as a disaster that ruined their life.

Okay, but in the Deadpool sequel, if they have Spider-Man the actor should rotate between Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland and nobody acknowledges it except for the occasional 4th wall break from Wade